From paper sketch to Mac painting, with your iPhone

How to scan a drawing with your iPhone to your Mac

1. Open your canvas

   Open the canvas you want the drawing on. The import goes into the front canvas window.

2. Choose Import from iPhone or iPad

   Choose File ▸ “Import from iPhone or iPad”. macOS lists your iPhone or iPad, with options to take a photo or scan documents.

3. Photograph or scan the sketch

   Lay the page flat in even light. On your iPhone, take the photo or scan and confirm it.

4. Find it on its own layer

   The image lands, fitted and centered, on a new layer named “Photo from iPhone”, and a “Photo added” pill offers “Paint It for Me”.

5. Set the layer to Multiply

   Click “Studio” in the toolbar. On the “Photo from iPhone” row, click the blend mode (it reads “Normal”) and choose “Multiply”.

6. Paint underneath

   Select an empty layer below it, such as “Layer 1”, and paint there. A new brush or color can start a new layer at the top, so drag “Photo from iPhone” back above it.

Scan a drawing with iPhone to Mac, onto its own layer

Paint My, a drawing and painting app for Mac, brings your paper sketch in with Continuity Camera. You scan the drawing with your iPhone or iPad, and it appears in the open canvas on a new layer named “Photo from iPhone”.

The image is fitted inside the canvas and centered, never scaled up, so a canvas as large as the image keeps all its detail. New canvases can be 64–8192 px on a side. As an ordinary layer, the drawing can be moved with the Move tool (V), faded with its opacity, or locked.

Continuity Camera on Mac: import from iPhone or iPad

Continuity Camera is an Apple feature that lets your iPhone or iPad take a photo or scan a document for your Mac. In Paint My you reach it from File ▸ “Import from iPhone or iPad”, a submenu that macOS provides.

Your Mac’s own camera isn’t used, so Paint My never asks for camera access. Paint My uploads nothing either, so your drawing stays on your Mac.

Importing is free. It adds a layer, so it counts toward the 3 layers of a free painting; if yours is full, Paint My offers “Combine Layers” instead. Pro has no layer limit.

Digitize drawings with iPhone: photo or scan?

Both work. A photo comes in at up to 4096 px on its long side. A scanned document arrives as a PDF, and Paint My renders its first page over white at up to 3000 px.

Paint My doesn’t clean up the image, so light the page evenly, avoid shadows and fill the frame with the drawing.

How to color a scanned drawing

Use the Multiply blend mode. Set the “Photo from iPhone” layer to “Multiply”: its white areas let the layers beneath show through, while the pencil lines stay dark. Then paint your colors on a layer below. All 27 blend modes are free.

A new tool or color usually starts a new layer on top of the stack, so drag those layers below “Photo from iPhone” in the Studio sidebar. Our guide to a drawing app with layers for Mac explains more.

Prefer lines on transparency? Before you paint, select “Photo from iPhone”, pick the Magic Wand (W), turn “Contiguous” off and click the white paper. Raise “Tolerance” first if the paper looks gray. Press Delete to clear it. File ▸ “Export Selected Layers…” (⇧⌘E) then saves just the lines as a PNG.

From paper sketch to digital: ink it, paint it, letter it

Treat the scan as an underdrawing: ink it with “Ballpoint” (free) or “Fine-liner” (Pro), or redraw it with the pencils of a sketching app for Mac. Lettering works too: scan a layout, then trace it in a calligraphy app for Mac.

Or, while the “Photo added” pill shows, click “Paint It for Me” to turn a photo into a painting with real brush strokes. One painting is free; more need Pro. Starting from a photo rather than a drawing? Use Magic ▸ “Photo to Sketch…” to turn a photo into a sketch.

Questions